Holiday Day 2 (Part 1): Tasmazia
This morning we had breakfast in Sheffield before having a last look at the murals and heading for Tasmazia and the Village of Lower Crackpot, about 15 minutes away in the wonderfully named Promised Land.
On the way I insisted we stop to take photos of Mt Roland.
It’s a stunning mountain that I just love looking at. I really want to climb to the summit one day. I can remember staying near there, at Gowrie Park, as a child, and I remember climbing the mountain, but I can’t remember if we went to the top. It’s 1233 metres and the walk to the top is 4-6 hours return, so it’s quite possible that we did.
Unfortunately it wasn’t a great day for photos, so I didn’t have a lot of luck, but I loved watching it change as the light changed, the clouds move and we drove along the road.
Finally it was time to say goodbye to the mountain and go to the place Juniordwarf had been excited about for the whole week. Slabs and I had been to Tasmazia years ago and loved it, so we were happy to have the chance to go back.
There’s 8 mazes in the complex, including the Great Maze, the replica Hampton Court Maze, the Hexagonal Maze and the Confusion Maze. The Great Maze contains a couple of other mazes: the Irish Maze, which we found, and the Cage Maze, which we didn’t.
We did, however, find the 3 Bears’ Cottage in the centre, which is the goal of the maze.
We also found Cubby Town (including the Spook House), the Balance Maze and the Crackpot Correction Centre.
Once we’d found our way out of the Great Maze, we were in the wonderfully cracked world of the Village of Lower Crackpot. It’s a 1/5 scale model village, which even has its own state Government Department of Blah and Obfuscation.
The residential area is called Upper Lower Crackpot and this has all the houses, the fairy princess castle and the Yellow Brick Road Maze.
Neither Slabs nor Juniordwarf had any luck in unsheathing the Great Sword of Crackpot.
We negotiated the Confusion Maze, the Hampton Court Maze and the Hexagon Maze. The Hampton Court Maze took us a long time, but we made it in the end.
The complex also has a very clever section called the Embassy Gardens, which wasn’t there when Slabs and I visited last time.
It has embassy buildings from over 40 countries and even an intergalactic embassy.
There’s also a whistleblowers monument and a memorial to boat people lost at sea, so it’s also a place to reflect and contemplate.
We had lunch at the Pancake Parlour, Juniordwarf posted a postcard for real, and then we hit the road for our final destination: Cradle Mountain.
On the way we passed this scene:
Beautiful!
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